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Technology Stocks : CRUS, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pokysconductor who wrote (7584)	3/6/2000 1:18:00 AM
From: Grand Poobah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8193

Since Sigmatel's quarterly revenue is only on the order of $10 million, I doubt the direct cash payout will be very big. I think the more important thing CRUS is going after is to send a message, not only to Sigmatel but also to all their competition, that they will protect their patent portfolio. It is one way to eliminate some of the competition in the audio codec business. If one company can get away with copying their intellectual property and underpricing them on the resulting product, then a lot more will start doing it. Conversely, if several companies find out that there are repercussions for infringing on CRUS patents, the rest of the competition should be more wary. Similarly, the sound card makers could be held liable and/or face injunctions for selling boards with the infringing chips, so they will be more likely to use the "real" CRUS chips. G.P.

To: pokysconductor who wrote (7584)	3/6/2000 4:35:00 PM
From: ptrader	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8193

We will have to see how the SigmaTel lawsuit works out. But this is what I know: 1) the founder of SigmaTel used to work at Crystal as a contractor 2) he worked on audio chips at Crystal 3) he left Crystal to start SigmaTel after he realized how good a business Crystal had in audio 4) Dave French had tried to buy SigmaTel, but was turned down 5)Dave French wants to corner the market in audio codecs 6) he is systematically trying to limit his competition 7) SigmaTel is a small company sigmatel.com BTW, I guess the word is out that CRUS is shipping a Stereo DAC on PS2. These parts are in very high volume at CRUS and can have a high margin based on the sales price. Also expect some good news announcements from the SXSW music conference next week.